Online Reputation Management

Reputation is an intangible asset that helps companies establish trust, promote loyalty among its customers, and eventually succeed in its business goals. If it becomes tarnished in any way, it can also become the downfall of a business.

This is the reason why all businesses protect their company’s reputation at all cost. To protect a company’s reputation online, they employ several methods. These methods include SEO,reputation management, and digital targeting. These three important concepts will be explained in detail in this article. What is SEO? Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of increasing the company website’s visibility by improving search engine results ranking.

According to many SEO experts, having a high ranking or being on the first page of a search engine results page translates to more sales and better reputation. But getting a high search engine ranking is not always easy as the algorithms and rules regarding ranking change very often. Digital marketers are constantly trying to keep up with these changes by adjusting their methods, studying the competition and using the right keywords. They also do their best to improve their content in order to become more relevant and useful for the customers.

How does SEO Affect Likability? When your company becomes the top search engine result because of a good search engine optimization strategy, you automatically have the advantage of being the first link that people will click on to find what they want. This gives your company a hundred times better visibility than all the other web results returned by the search engine. Better visibility often paves the way for likability.

The first search engine result sets the bar for the rest of the websites in terms of relevance. It became first in ranking because the search engine crawlers deemed that the site contains all the right answers to the search or the question that the customer has entered into the search box. When your company gets consistent top search engine result rankings, the perception of the customer is that your content or your company is the most relevant and the best match to his search. The company should deliver on this perception and the customer should find the answers to all his questions on your website.

When your website is viewed as relevant, customers start to reference your content or webpage and soon more and more people will believe that your page is the most significant information they can find on the internet. When this happens, your reputation is enhanced as more people look to you for expert advice and credible information. What is Reputation Management? Managing a company’s reputation online involves using different platforms effectively to spread word of the company’s great products and services.

You can do this by creating blogs, managing social media sites, guest posting, and many more. Managing reputation also means having to dispel and disprove dispelling and disproving all bad things about your products or services by creating content that counter these negative publicity. Companies hire support teams, public relations teams, and even spin doctors just to make sure that their reputation remains spotless.

For online management of reputation, they often rely on ORM specialists. ORM specialists turn a bad review around so that it looks good for the company’s reputation. They speak with the person who posted the bad review to ask him to take the post down or ask him to give the product another shot. They also request for search engines to remove that page from their index by checking if it violates any of their guidelines. Good Rep and Likability When people go online to search for information about your company and they don’t find any negative reviews, they instantly assume that your company has a very good track record.

When people only see good reviews, they view this as positive sign and will want to do business with you more. A spotless reputation increases your likability. People will start trusting your brand because there are only good reviews about it. If people search online and see only negative reviews without immediate action on your end, they see it as a bad sign of how you treat your customers. They see your product as poorly made and think that your after sales is not reliable. This can spell doom for your company if you don’t do damage control fast. What is Digital Targeting? Knowing who your target audience is what this concept is all about. Digitally targeting your audience allows you to sell your product from a point of view that your audience understands. When you speak your audience’s language, you are able to reach them better and convey your message in a clear manner. To target your audience digitally, you need to look at statistics, demographics, and geographic data. If you are selling young adult books for example, you need to know what these young adults respond to when it comes to advertising and marketing.

You have to know what they like and talk to them in a way that they will understand. If you are targeting younger audience for example, you will need to adjust your content’s tone and language so that it matches the audience comprehension. If you are targeting intellectuals like scientists on the other hand, you will also need to improve your content so that it appeals to the sensibility of your audience.

You adjust your content to appeal to your target audience. Getting Your Audience to Like You When you are able to deliver what your audience likes in a manner that speaks to them personally, you gain their trust and improve your likability rating.

They will keep returning to your site because they know that you can be trusted to give them what they are looking for. Soon your target audience will look to you for information, share your content with their friends, and help build your reputation for you without payment. They do this only because they see your website as a place they can go to for relevant information. These three marketing methods are important in ensuring that your audience like you enough to want to do business with you or keep doing business with you for a long time. Utilize these methods in order to gain more followers and have more people liking your pages and social media presence.